Comment

MAY 5, 1997

• Guest Editorial -- Too much violence in ice hockey today ...By William N. Wallace, Bridge Information Systems
• Comment -- One school's approach to salary equity
• Opinions -- Newspapers react to Supreme Court's Title IX action

Guest Editorial -- Too much violence in ice hockey today

BY WILLIAM N. WALLACE
Bridge Information Systems

From his wheelchair, Travis Roy watched Mitch Vig skate. Once upon a time, Roy, a quadriplegic, could skate like that.

But on October 20, 1995, in his first varsity game as a freshman forward for Boston University, Roy crashed headfirst into the boards at Walter Brown Arena in Boston and did not get up. He had shattered the fourth vertebra in his neck.

His team was playing the University of North Dakota, and 19-year-old Roy had just finished checking Vig, a defenseman for the Fighting Sioux, before losing his balance.

"It was an accident. That's all," Roy has said many times since.

Recently, at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee, North Dakota defeated Boston U. for the NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Championship. Vig was skating for the victors, and Roy was watching. He was the undergraduate in the wheelchair at the mezzanine level.

He and Vig had a friendly chat the day before. As he has said many times, "It was an accident. That's all."

Accident or not, there is too much violence in hockey at every level -- from peewees to juniors, from college to the National Hockey League.

Little can be done about the pros because fighting has long been a marketing arm of their games.

Following the recent bloodbath between the Colorado Avalanche and the Detroit Red Wings, one in which goalies Patrick Roy and Mike Vernon opened facial wounds upon one another, commentator Stan Fischler wrote: "The hits and the punches provide a pungency that has made hockey special for more than a century. I say leave the game alone."

At the intercollegiate level, however, something needs be done. That was the consensus among coaches and officials at the championship in Milwaukee.

There is an equipment dilemma, however. A majority of coaches claim that the mandatory face masks have given the skaters a feeling of protection -- so they throw their bodies around indiscriminately.

They swing their sticks high and deliver checks from behind without fear of wounding retaliation.

Red Berenson, the University of Michigan coach and a former NHL player, claims that hitting from behind was unknown in college hockey before adoption of the mask a decade ago.

Jack Parker of Boston U. says the plastic mask limits views from the side. "Kids get blindsided all the time," he says. "We have people in wheelchairs, and that's because of the masks."

Yet the face masks remain because no one wants to go back to the days when hockey players were distinguished by facial scars and lack of teeth.

Also, says Parker, there are "the lawyers."

"Besides," adds Charles Holden, coordinator of hockey officials for the NCAA, "if you take the face masks off tomorrow, that doesn't mean automatically the sticks are going to come down."

High sticking amounts to waving the sticks near opponents' faces. Holden and other NCAA supervisors constantly urge their referees to assess penalties for high sticking and for checking from behind, too.

Some referees do more often than others. If they call too many penalties, the referees will say, then the coaches get angry and give them bad marks in their reviews.

At Milwaukee, members of the Dartmouth College and Michigan teams in the first championship game were back to help celebrate this 50th one.

Some wince at the big hits in the semifinal match between Boston U. and Michigan.

"That's not the way we played the game," says 74-year-old Bob Amirault, one-time Dartmouth center and retired IBM executive.

"I want to see plays, not hits," says Bill Cleary, the former Harvard University coach and player who is now athletics director there.

Cleary, who was voted to the 50th anniversary all-time team, is often outspoken about the turn his favorite sport has taken. "Concussions," he says, "too many concussions."

Statistics are hard to come by, but there is a perception that teen-age and even pre-teen hockey players are being knocked down too frequently.

Ken Hanson of Colorado Springs, a former college player and now a junior team coach, says he believes there were more than a dozen concussions this season in a program of about 250 players.

When kids put on their armor, plus the face mask, and then step on the ice, he says, it is more likely they will seek out another skater to bang into rather than learn the fundamentals of stick handling.

Hockey reflects the violence in our society. Too often, a televised hockey highlight focuses not on the perfect transition pass to set up a goal, but rather two guys without the puck colliding to prove how tough they are.

This noble sport deserves better.

William N. Wallace has viewed the American sporting scene in various poses, chiefly as a daily journalist for New York City newspapers, including The New York Times.

Comment -- One school's approach to salary equity

BY KENNETH ESKEY

It's no secret that many head coaches at big-time football and basketball schools earn more money in salary and other income than distinguished professors and often earn more than the college presidents who hire them.

So well rewarded are successful coaches in the revenue-producing sports that coaching -- with its opportunity for substantial outside income from radio, television, summer camps and commercial endorsements -- has become a lucrative adjunct to higher education.

Annual pay packages of $500,000 or more no longer are unusual for coaches who take their teams to football bowl games or postseason basketball tournaments.

But the fact is that most college coaches are not campus celebrities and are not lavishly paid, especially in sports such as swimming and gymnastics that draw few spectators and produce little or no revenue.

Nor is there any systematic method, at most schools, for deciding how much coaches are worth. A complicating factor is the growing popularity of women's teams in basketball, volleyball and other sports. Should women's coaches be paid on the same basis as coaches of men's teams? And how does a college decide how much a tennis or golf coach should be paid?

Minnesota study

Some answers to those questions are coming from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Two years ago -- in the midst of a nasty dispute over salaries for women's coaches (one coach was fired and later given a $300,000 settlement) -- the university appointed a sports-compensation committee of outsiders and insiders to develop guidelines for coaches' pay.

Among the committee members were Charles Denny, retired chairman of the board, ADC Telecommunication; Richard Lidstad, vice president for Human Resources at 3M; two faculty members; and the chair of an advisory council on women's athletics at Minnesota. Two consultants were hired to help develop pay scales.

The committee was chaired by Sandra Hale, a Minneapolis business, government and educational consultant and former commissioner of administration in Minnesota state government.

Hale soon discovered that comparing sports for pay purposes can be treacherous.

First plan

Men's basketball, football and hockey were assigned the highest pay category, followed by women's basketball and volleyball. The other 14 varsity sports for men and women were divided into two lower categories, the lowest of which included swimming and track for both men and women.

"They have artificially created groups, and I'm not sure of their motives," said men's swimming coach Dennis Dale. "If the committee had a brain, they'd be dangerous."

Hale later remarked that "I feel a bit like the (brainless) scarecrow in 'The Wizard of Oz,' " but she promised to come up with a pay plan that is fair, flexible and rewarding to coaches whose teams do well. When the final guidelines for coaches' compensation were approved by the university last September, the lowest category of teams was eliminated, lumping all the sports not expected to produce revenue into a single category. That created a total of three categories, with the three money-making sports at the top, two potential money-making sports (women's basketball and volleyball) in the middle and the others in a third group.

Based on a 1994-95 survey of salaries paid at Big Ten Conference schools, including Minnesota, base salary ranges were set at $96,582 to $169,018 for the three revenue sports, $61,034 to $115,966 for the revenue-potential sports and $27,677 to $66,425 for the others, with the figures to be revised as more current surveys are completed.

Marketplace influence

"The marketplace is a powerful influence," Hale said. "I want to emphasize that the categories do not reflect the committee's personal interests or the values we place on any individual sport."

Similar categories were set up for assistant coaches, with a salary range of $52,645 to $100,025 for offensive and defensive coordinators in football; $40,717 to $77,363 for men's basketball, football and ice hockey; $32,572 to $61,888 for women's basketball and volleyball; and $21,152 to $40,188 for the other sports.

The ranges are broad enough to give the university plenty of negotiating room, but they do provide parameters that didn't exist before.

"It gives us a framework to discuss salaries," said McKinley Boston, vice-president of student affairs and athletics at the university. "The ranges are purposely broad. We didn't want to tie our hands."

Broad guidelines

Boston believes the process of developing guidelines has been well worth the effort. "It gave us a chance to debate the impact of the market on coaches' salaries," he said. "We've had a number of inquiries about our guidelines from other colleges and universities. If someone wants to use us as a model, that's fine."

One issue that has arisen since the guidelines were adopted is whether coaches in the nonrevenue category can be moved into a higher category if their teams begin to attract paying customers. "It's a good question," Boston said. "We still haven't resolved it."

An obvious difference between coaches and assistant coaches is that head coaches often supplement their base salaries with endorsements, radio and television contracts, and shoe, apparel and equipment contracts. The shoe contracts for basketball coaches are especially attractive, and the Big Ten requires that such contracts be negotiated by the university, not the coach, with the athletics director and coach then deciding who gets how much.

The new guidelines at Minnesota will be in effect for two years and could be extended indefinitely if they prove workable. Existing contracts with coaches will be honored; new contracts must fall within the guidelines.

Below, in question-and-answer form, are the salient points of the Minnesota guidelines, as explained by Hale:

Q: Did you make a distinction in your pay guidelines between major sports and minor sports?

A: The distinction we make is between revenue and nonrevenue sports, not between major and minor sports.

Q: Are there any distinctions between men's and women's sports?

A: Not as such. The distinctions have to do with revenue.

Q: How willing were coaches to accept your guidelines?

A: There were some early concerns about who was in what category, but the final guidelines have been generally acceptable.

Q: Are your salary ranges competitive?

A: Yes. The marketplace is a definite factor in our guidelines.

Q: Is there a reward for having winning teams?

A: Yes. For example, coaches and assistants are eligible for a five percent bonus if they win a conference championship, 10 percent if they win a national championship.

Q: What if a team wins a championship but its players have poor academic records? Does the bonus still apply?

A: No. All bonuses are contingent on a team having a cumulative grade point average for scholarship athletes of at least 2.25 and a cumulative average of at least 2.00 for 75 percent of the athletes.

Kenneth Eskey covered economics and education for Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C., from 1978 to 1995.

Opinions -- Newspapers react to Supreme Court's Title IX action

Editorial
The San Francisco Chronicle

"Nearly eight times as many girls play high-school sports as girls did 25 years ago. More than three times as many young women play college sports as they did 25 years ago.

"These are not accidental statistics. They can be directly attributed to Title IX, which was passed by Congress in 1972 and requires that at federally funded schools members of both sexes receive an equal opportunity, consistent with their interests and abilities, to participate in sports and reap the benefits of competitive athletics.

"It has been slow going, especially at the college level. According to one survey, only 28 of 303 NCAA Division I schools come close to meeting numerical parity between men and women in their sports programs.

"But there has been progress, especially in sports such as women's basketball, with its large following and dazzling pool of talent.

"The U.S. Supreme Court gave Title IX a boost April 21 by refusing to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that Brown University in Rhode Island discriminated against women in its unequal sports offerings....

"The court's decision to let stand the appellate ruling is a strong message to college foot-draggers to stop complaining and start complying with Title IX, which is not only the lawful thing to do, but the right thing to do.

"The argument does not hold that funding for football in particular and men's sports in general should take priority because women themselves choose not to participate in sports in as large numbers as men.

"That's the same argument they were using 25 years ago."

Editorial
The Atlanta Journal

"The U.S. Supreme Court on April 21 moved to uphold proportional equity between the sexes. Not in access to jobs, housing or college admissions. But in college sports.

"In a field in which women have historically shown a lot less interest than men, the court let stand an appeals court ruling requiring Brown University to maintain the same percentage of women on athletics fields as in its classrooms.

"We support efforts to improve access to women's collegiate sports. And we're in favor of the law that does so, Title IX, which bars gender bias in education.

"But this ruling presumes that women gravitate to sports in the same numbers as men. And that flies in the face of reality....

"(T)he court needs to address this still-unanswered question: Does Title IX require proportional representation in all aspects of college life, including those areas in which one gender has shown less interest than the other? Confused college officials are also in need of the court's guidance. Many, like officials at Brown, are just as likely to cut men's programs to achieve equity as to add women's.

"We think the intent of Title IX was to prevent schools from discriminating -- not to engineer near-perfect gender balances in all college programs. If fewer men than women gravitate, say, to the nation's nursing schools, should those schools be forced to achieve parity by cutting available spots for women?"

Editorial
The Washington Post

"....In high schools, the changes brought by Title IX are substantial. Only 32,000 girls participated in competitive athletics before the law was passed, and many who wanted to play were relegated to the cheerleading squad. Now 2.13 million girls are in high-school sports programs, and their opportunities for college athletics scholarships -- once almost entirely limited to boys -- have increased dramatically. So has respect for and interest in female competitive sports....

"Title IX has had an impact not only on athletes but on their nonplaying peers and girls who are too young to compete but old enough to absorb the idea that women can compete and win in all sorts of arenas. The colleges may not like accommodating to this fact, but the courts are right to hold them to a high standard."